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The Effective Tech Lead Is a 100x Engineer

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Re: The Effective Tech Lead Is a 100x Engineer

#41

Post by tboyd47 »

leonardsouza wrote: post #37
tboyd47 wrote: post #17

> The Tech Lead is a “hybrid” role with one foot in management and the other in engineering I may have a limited experience but I've never seen an effective Tech Lead who was a hybrid like this and I have serious doubts it's even possible. The amount of time these tech leads spend coding necessarily expands and consumes the time they have available for management. The type of "management" they do then becomes more de…

These are all fantastic points and are in the forefront of our minds as we support our Tech Leads in their difficult charter. I'll do my best to explain how we (at Webflow) mitigate such situations and why we find them symptoms of larger issues in our organization. First off, this requires a top-down commitment from leadership and clear expectations on their behalf. It requires us to provide our leads with the tools…

It sounds like you're aware of some of the problems I listed and have come up with novel solutions to them. Why not just employ true managers? What benefit do you get from having people who are half-in, half-out?

How do you deal with the fact that most developers do not like management? Have you ever had a Tech Lead who didn't want to actually manage other devs, but just liked having extra authority and access to stakeholders? What do you do, then?

Re: The Effective Tech Lead Is a 100x Engineer

#42

Post by losteric »

tboyd47 wrote: post #17

> The Tech Lead is a “hybrid” role with one foot in management and the other in engineering I may have a limited experience but I've never seen an effective Tech Lead who was a hybrid like this and I have serious doubts it's even possible. The amount of time these tech leads spend coding necessarily expands and consumes the time they have available for management. The type of "management" they do then becomes more de…

You're describing individual personality shortfalls, not problems intrinsic to the role.

> In the best case, they do split work, delegate, mentor, and lead meetings, but always end up doing the business critical or challenging pieces themselves (because why would I take the time to explain this when I could just do it...)

The best case scenario is seeing yourself as a facilitator first and foremost. A tech lead that succeeds at delegating, mentoring, and developing their peers does not need to do the business critical work ... peers should be able to do so, with some light oversight (design/code reviews). If some complex/business critical work is a couple months away, the lead should proactively work to disseminate their knowledge.

This parallels management - a bad manager micro-manages execution, a good manager builds mostly autonomous teams... a bad lead engineer micro-manages execution, a tech lead oversees a team of mostly autonomous engineers.

Sure, your team will move slower at the beginning. But think long-term, maximize the integral.

Re: The Effective Tech Lead Is a 100x Engineer

#43

Post by tboyd47 »

jdmichal wrote: post #40
tboyd47 wrote: post #17

> The Tech Lead is a “hybrid” role with one foot in management and the other in engineering I may have a limited experience but I've never seen an effective Tech Lead who was a hybrid like this and I have serious doubts it's even possible. The amount of time these tech leads spend coding necessarily expands and consumes the time they have available for management. The type of "management" they do then becomes more de…

> The amount of time these tech leads spend coding necessarily expands and consumes the time they have available for management. I call this being a "dev++", and I think it's an unhealthy mindset for leadership. Moving into leadership means advancing beyond the tasks you used to do. This is true everywhere , and lack of promoting yourself beyond those tasks will drag you down. This goes all the way up to c-suite leve…

Thank you, this is exactly what I'm getting at.

I have been a non-coding tech lead before, and I do not understand how a person can both code and manage others without working overtime. Coding requires hours of uninterrupted focus time every day. Management requires making yourself available to help people. You cannot be both available and not available.

Re: The Effective Tech Lead Is a 100x Engineer

#44

Post by dalbasal »

tboyd47 wrote: post #17

> The Tech Lead is a “hybrid” role with one foot in management and the other in engineering I may have a limited experience but I've never seen an effective Tech Lead who was a hybrid like this and I have serious doubts it's even possible. The amount of time these tech leads spend coding necessarily expands and consumes the time they have available for management. The type of "management" they do then becomes more de…

We tend to prefer the word "role" over "position," these days. I think this hints at a quasi-idealistic blindspot we tend to assume, when it comes to questions like these.

Ultimately, you can't reason about this (IMO) without accounting for the hierarchical aspect. Saying "dev with super powers is similar to saying ""dev with one foot in management" because it captures roles and hierarchy. That's all you really need to know. There are mundane aspects to this: "engineers ... find their own powers magnified 10-fold..." Managers impact the work of multiple people, therefore... multiplication.

The less mundane aspects of this are sociological. Cultural distinctions, I guess you could call it. For example, in a not-so-long-dead culture, "X with superpowers" was how most professions worked. The called it masters & apprentices. A brilliant master, aided in his productivity by apprentices and journeymen was a rhetorical ideal.

The modern ideal feels a little confused. Our ideal seems to be (eg, our vocabulary) non-hierarchical. Leading is a role, not a position. OTOH, I think this makes us avoid some questions.

Re: The Effective Tech Lead Is a 100x Engineer

#46

Post by tboyd47 »

Mc91 wrote: post #33
tboyd47 wrote: post #17

> The Tech Lead is a “hybrid” role with one foot in management and the other in engineering I may have a limited experience but I've never seen an effective Tech Lead who was a hybrid like this and I have serious doubts it's even possible. The amount of time these tech leads spend coding necessarily expands and consumes the time they have available for management. The type of "management" they do then becomes more de…

I agree. The most important question for me when looking at a position is whether the team has a lead or manager, if they have a lead it is a bad sign. They are too busy coding to manage, they are territorial and are responsible for the all the important, business critical, high profile pieces. I wish leads did veto more - often I am "delegated" a task, spend a week on it, then they look at it and tell me to it a dif…

I want to add that the title "Tech Lead" doesn't always mean the person is a half-dev/half-manager, nor does the title "Manager" indicate the person has totally stopped coding. Often times, the "Manager" or even "CTO" title will be held by the principal developer. It's also possible to find "Tech Leads" whose duties are 100% management, but they cannot bear the title for reasons dictated by HR.

Re: The Effective Tech Lead Is a 100x Engineer

#47

Post by jdmichal »

barrkel wrote: post #30
tboyd47 wrote: post #17

> The Tech Lead is a “hybrid” role with one foot in management and the other in engineering I may have a limited experience but I've never seen an effective Tech Lead who was a hybrid like this and I have serious doubts it's even possible. The amount of time these tech leads spend coding necessarily expands and consumes the time they have available for management. The type of "management" they do then becomes more de…

I agree. The two skill sets - management and technical ability - rarely overlap strongly, and even when they do, the person is usually comparatively better at one or the other where they're better off focusing - and I mean comparatively with reference to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage . When someone is strong at making technical decisions, they'll also want to own the delivery of the most technic…

There is a middle ground of delegating, and then refining approach as the team works. Of course, this must be done judiciously. Doing this for non-functional reasons like coding style will get quickly tiring to both the lead and the team.

Re: The Effective Tech Lead Is a 100x Engineer

#48

Post by aylmao »

I know it's hyperbole and I'm being nit-picky but come on, 100x?

10x already sounds a bit like exaggeration, but implying there's an engineer out there who can do the same amount of work in 3-4 days as a normal engineer in a year is too much lol.

Re: The Effective Tech Lead Is a 100x Engineer

#49

Post by [deleted] »

tboyd47 wrote: post #17

> The Tech Lead is a “hybrid” role with one foot in management and the other in engineering I may have a limited experience but I've never seen an effective Tech Lead who was a hybrid like this and I have serious doubts it's even possible. The amount of time these tech leads spend coding necessarily expands and consumes the time they have available for management. The type of "management" they do then becomes more de…

[deleted]

Re: The Effective Tech Lead Is a 100x Engineer

#50

Post by brainbrane »

tech_tuna wrote: post #38
mykull wrote: post #2

I really don't think coining the term 10x did anything to help developers or the state of development, and likewise here.

Agreed, any real 10x engineer would scoff at the term. I've known maybe a handful of people I'd consider 10x in my career.

> I've known maybe a handful of people I'd consider 10x in my career.

I've only known one. And having that type of engineer isn't necessarily all it's cracked up to be.

The other members of the team would discuss a problem, hash out a couple of potential solutions, and then begin assessing how long it will take and who will do which parts.

Two days later the 10x engineer would drop an amazing implementation of the solution into our laps.

The result is that everyone else on the team got demoralized and stressed about whether they were going to have meaningful work to point to in their performance assessments. The entire team ended up blowing apart.

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